Verify domain ownership

When you sign your business up for a Google for Work product, you provide the domain name you want to use with Google services. This is the unique name that appears after the @ sign in your company email address and after www. in your web site address. Before your organization can use Google services like Gmail with your company's domain, you'll need to verify that you own it. This ensures that no one else can use services or send email that appears to come from your company.

Verifying your domain does not disrupt your current mail service or affect other existing services.

You can verify your domain in any of several ways, depending on which is most convenient. To do this, you'll need to update either your domain's DNS settings or files on your domain's web server. Google can then detect your updates and verify that you own the domain.

Just sign up for a Google for Work product and follow the instructions that appear during the signup process. They will walk you through choosing a verification method and completing the steps.

If you already signed up but skipped the option to verify, sign in to the Google Admin console and click the link at the top of your dashboard to confirm that you own your domain. Then follow the instructions.

You must complete verification within 21 days of signing up for Google Apps or we'll remove your domain from our system and you'll have to sign up again.

Once you're asked to verify your domain, it's best to do so right away. Until you verify, you won't be able to use Gmail and some other business services.

If you signed up for Google Apps for Education, Google Apps for Government, or Google Apps for Work, you must verify domain ownership within 21 days. If you don't verify ownership within this timeframe, we'll remove your domain and data from our system. If you want to use Google Apps in the future, just sign up again with your domain.

When you verify that you own a domain, you also prove that you own all of its subdomains, and all sites in those subdomains. For example, if you verify http://www.example.com and later add http://www.example.com/test, you're automatically verified as the owner of http://www.example.com/test.

The Google Webmaster Tools service needs to be enabled for your administrator account to successfully complete the verification. This additional service is enabled by default but if you're having trouble activating the domain even though you see the message 'Already verified using this method' in the verification steps, please ensure that the Google Webmaster Tools is correctly turned on for your administrator account and try again.

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